Waiting
by northernexposure
Summary: Her face was a landscape he knew. Just a tiny piece of Daryl introspection, based on a quiet little scene in S5 E2. Spoilers for S5, so don't read if you haven't seen those eps yet.


**Waiting**

**Summary: **Her face was a landscape he knew.

**A/N:** Just a tiny piece of introspection, based on a quiet little scene in S5 E2. Spoilers for S5, so don't read if you haven't seen those eps yet.

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><p>Around them, the forest was quiet. Daryl would have liked to think of it as the peace that descends following thunder – god knew they could all use some respite. But things being what they were, it was more likely the calm before yet another storm. Either way, by his way of thinking it was best to take what you could get.<p>

He'd be a fool to forget, though, that the last storm had thrown Carol back into his path, which just went to prove that not everything could be all bad, all the time. Maybe that meant something, after all. Some'd say it was a sign, no doubt: a sign that life has a way of evening out. He wouldn't go that far. He had yet to be given something with one hand that couldn't be snatched away by another.

Daryl watched her now, seated beside him, her face in profile as she looked out at the trees. He remembered how her hair had been when they'd first met. It was longer now, its silver beginning to curl slightly as it clawed its way back to some length. He wasn't fool enough to think she'd let it keep going. First chance Carol had, she'd hack it all back again. It's a penance for something, he thinks, or perhaps she just never wants to go back to how she looked, before. He wonders how that pre-Walker Carol would be. She'd have been timid, for sure, that bastard husband of hers choking the least little hint of spirit out of her before it had chance to take root. But a spark must have been there. It just took the end of the world to fan the flames into a fire. If he'd met her back then, or even before her husband had got to her, would he have recognised that in her? Would he have looked at her twice, if not?

He'd known a fair few women in his time. Loved a couple, even, maybe. He'd never really had to look far to find a pretty face looking back at him. He'd never questioned it, and he'd rarely turned a woman away. Yet even then, he'd kept himself to himself – he liked women well enough, had more respect for 'em than his brother, that's for damn certain. He'd never hit a woman, never thought she was something less than he was, never thought he had a right over her that she didn't have over him. But until he'd met Carol, he'd never realised just how damn strong they could be. Once she'd found her backbone she wielded it like a machete. She was like him. She did what had to be done. She listened more than she spoke.

When she'd left the prison he'd lost something that he hadn't known he'd had in the first place. A piece of himself that had grown, unasked for and unnamed, like an additional, invisible limb. He wondered if she'd felt the same. He would never ask, just as he'd never admit. He'd tried to sever the last tangled veins of the connection, with drink and the possibility of another face. He hadn't realised how far he'd been from succeeding until he'd turned and seen her standing there, whole, human, and having dragged his bow through the maelstrom she'd left behind.

Her face was a landscape he knew, he realised now. He had inadvertently learned it the way he learned every trail - the contours of it, the planes. The way the fine lines spun out from the corners of her eyes like the skeins of silk stretched out to house a butterfly in its cocoon, the way the high bones of her cheeks caught the moonlight and reflected it right back like a storm lamp in the darkness. The way her mouth was dipped, now, which meant that she knew he was watching her but was unwilling to acknowledge him, waiting him out instead. But two could play at that game. He could read her face forever.

She turned her head away, her eyelashes casting a filigree of thin shadows against her cheek as she blinked. She didn't want to talk about it, she said.

And that was fine.

He knew how to wait.

[END]


End file.
